HOW WE WORK:
On The Farm we work in collaboration.
That’s Collaboration with a capital C. Or even with a K like the Germans use: Kollaboration, that feels better (or ‘besser’). We want to give the word the utmost importance and find a way to make it stand out for you as you read this, because it’s a word that’s often been overused and misrepresented, like ‘love’ or ‘vaccination’.
Collaboration is important to us because for many years we’ve been making work without a director. Which seems to scare people. How do you make decisions? How do you tie your shoelaces in the morning? How do you purchase crypto currency?
Don’t worry, we’ve been doing it for a while now… except for the crypto, we missed that boat.
When we start a project we recognise it as something we’re making for the first time, therefore the rules have to be created afresh. Again that may seem scary but, like we said, we’ve been doing this for over 20 years so some of our rules are embodied in the way we approach things. We create a balance between old familiar faces and new ones, because we understand that everyone likes to see a fresh face. And younger people look better on instagram.
We begin our process by casting our net as wide as possible. We use improvisation, discussions, meditation, alcohol, YouTube, improvisation, dance class, Elton John, other art forms, other genres, movies, books, poems, improvisation, Patty Smith, writing, discussions, arguments, improvisation, choreography, David Lynch, dramaturgy, friends, peers, children, experience, personal stories, improvisation, stunts and improvisation.
We search for the show in the darkness of our imaginations. Like the old parable about the blind men and the elephant, none of us can take it in all at once. We feel around until someone shouts out “I think I’ve got a leg!”
In the parable, the blind men often come to blows because they all think they know what the elephant is from their limited perception of it. That might be because they’re all men (depends on your viewpoint), but in any case it’s a trap we try to avoid at all costs. We deliberately disown ideas, using a collective “we” rather than “I” (maybe you’ve noticed?). We don’t claim to know what it is we are making. We just put together all the bits and pieces we’ve managed to grasp in the dark and see how they fit together.
At some point we begin to feel there’s something tangible taking shape, some kind of creature growing in the corner of our studio, sleeping there at night, demanding to be fed in the light of day.
We defer to it because it knows more about what it is than we do.
We know it’s listening to us when we talk about it. It roars at bad ideas and hoots when we nail something. It’s impossible to ignore, so we help it grow to its full potential. We feed it with design elements, movement, dramaturgy. But carefully. We don’t want to stare it in the face or talk too loud, because we think we might scare it off.
We approach it sideways, like one of the Fremen crossing the desert in Dune.
Eventually, when it seems strong enough to walk, we take it outside and show it to other people. We say, “Check out what we’ve found in the dark of that room.”
We hope they love it as much as we do.